FED:NSW govt BER costs improving

The NSW government has achieved better value for money for new school buildings since an investigative taskforce criticised cost blowouts in the state.

The latest report of the Building the Education Revolution (BER) taskforce, released on Wednesday, found that NSW had the highest cost per square metre of all 22 education authorities and on average built the smallest facilities.

However, since the taskforce's interim August report into Labor's $14.1 billion Primary Schools for the 21st Century (P21) program, part of the BER, the NSW government's school building cost per square metre has decreased by 11 per cent.

Taskforce head Brad Orgill said it was an encouraging trend.

"(It's) consistent with their earlier advice anticipating final costs to be below initial estimates," he wrote.

"The taskforce believes costs will remain fluid and may increase as projects are re-scoped and closed out."

Seventy six per cent of complaints about NSW projects related to value-for-money concerns, which Mr Orgill said was because construction companies were not focused on that goal.

In Victoria, where 38 per cent of complaints were about value for money, the taskforce found private sector project managers did not adequately consult with some schools and hadn’t paid enough attention to building detail and quality.

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Mr Orgill said 17 schools around the country had not received value for money, 13 of which were public institutions in NSW.

The taskforce is looking into another 82 individual projects and will report back on them in May 2011.

Mr Orgill said many of the nation’s 22 education authorities heavily relied on the competitive tender process to deliver value for money but that approach alone had often failed.

He praised the “innovative and flexible" ways Western Australia, South Australia and Tasmania pursued value for money, while Catholic and independent schools also impressed investigators.

“A number of aspects drove cost and whether authorities were government or non-government was not pivotal," Mr Orgill wrote.

“Where school communities views have been carefully considered ... and where available flexibility in the guidelines has been taken, education authorities and schools have secured higher quality educational infrastructure outcomes and better value for money."

The taskforce found that with only 43 per cent of BER projects complete, it was too early to say whether individual education authorities got value for money.

Mr Orgill made three recommendations in his latest report, including that the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations work with government education authorities to encourage cost-performance reporting on future spending.

The report put NSW “fairly and squarely" at the bottom of the pile, the state opposition said.

Opposition education spokesman
Adrian Piccoli
pinned the blame for the results on the Keneally government.

“NSW had the most expensive projects, the smallest projects and the most complaints," Mr Piccoli said in a statement.

“When it comes to the BER, NSW is fairly and squarely at the bottom of the pile."

The BER program was designed by the federal government as a stimulus measure to deliver new facilities to schools across Australia but it has been criticised for major cost blowouts.